Not every flagship needs to be a complete reinvention — sometimes, fine-tuning the right elements makes all the difference. I’ve been using the OnePlus 13 for almost all of January to see if it has brought in some dramatic changes or refined nearly everything it touches. Does it make the cut for the ultimate flagship experience or is it just a safe upgrade? Let’s find out.
Design and display
The Arctic Dawn that I’ve got for review looks elegant in white. Weighing 210 grams, the smartphone offers a decent grip with a matte-textured glass finish at the rear. There’s also the Midnight Ocean with a vegan leather finish (it’s the nicest looking one) and a Black Eclipse variant that makes its debut. The alert slider finds the usual spot on the top-left.
The 6.82-inch OLED display also offers bright, vivid visuals and decent readability in direct sunlight. Fool Me Once, a British thriller, kept me hooked to the OnePlus 13 for a couple of weeks. Adapted from Harlan Coben’s homonymous novel, the miniseries starts with a woman who spots her deceased husband, back in their home, on the nanny cam and the incidents that follow. The storyline was gripping and the visuals were crisp on the smartphone. Gaming also felt engaging on the device and it felt comfortable to have slightly extended gaming sessions on the phone, despite a bit of heft.
There’s a brand new Glove Mode which might be useful if you live through harsh winters — certainly not the case down South. You can seamlessly use the display even while wearing woollen and sheepskin gloves which are up to 0.5 cm thick. The Aqua Touch feature has also been upgraded to a better touch experience despite rain or sweat on the display, and even through waterproof bags.
Camera
The OnePlus 13 sports a unique triple 50 MP camera setup at the rear. The collab with Hasselblad continues in deciding the overall quality and aesthetics delivered by the smartphone camera. The shots taken in daylight rendered some true-to-life colours — be it landscape, architecture or animals. The rare time it didn’t get the colours right was under bright sunlight in the afternoon. Wide-angle shots delivered some decent 120-degree visuals without too much distortion. Three new easily accessible filters — Fresh, Emerald and Clear — offer a refreshing spin for whenever you want to play around with the aesthetics of a photo.
Action Mode, designed to capture subjects on the move while keeping them in focus, has been improved. The brand shared that the sensor output automatically doubles from 30 fps to 60 fps, effectively avoiding motion blur.
Edge detection has noticeably improved on the OnePlus 13, not that the OnePlus 12 had given us much room for complaint. The skin tones are accurate too, and there are three modes — 1x, 2x and 3x zoom — to capture portraits. The smartphone is also capable of recording 4K at 60 fps and equipped with Dolby Vision HDR both on the primary rear camera setup as well as the selfie camera.
The OnePlus 13 sports a unique triple 50 MP camera setup at the rear.
For post-processing, there’s a new AI Detail Boost option, which enhances the overall image clarity. This function works well only with photos that have some distortion or blurriness, which gets sharper with this tweak. This has little to no effect on pictures that are well-focused to begin with. There is also an AI Reflection Eraser to use in snaps that have unintended reflections or glares in the frame.
If you’re hooked on the AI features, you’ll be happy to find the usual suspects are on board — Circle to Search, Magic Compose and AI Notes, which tweaks the tone of your notes, tidies up disorganised text and even adds to your ideas. The smartphone runs on OxygenOS 15 (based on Android 15), which includes a new ‘Share with iPhone’ feature for high-speed file sharing with iPhone users.
Tech Specs
The OnePlus 13 runs on the flagship-grade Snapdragon 8 Elite processor. The unit I reviewed had 16 GB RAM and 512 GB of storage. Multitasking, switching between apps and gaming were super smooth on the OnePlus 13. The brand has promised four years of software updates and six years of security updates, making it fairly future-proof. The smartphone packs in a massive 6,000 mAh battery (dual-cell 3,000 mAh batteries) and, like its predecessors, offers excellent battery life. My usage typically involved playing Cooking Rage for about 30 minutes, taking lots of photos, watching videos or shows for about an hour and checking emails. With this kind of usage, the smartphone kept me company for almost a day and a half before I had to plug it in.
The smartphone is compatible with 100 W wired fast charging that can power up the smartphone fully in under 40 minutes. It also supports 50W wireless charging using a compatible AIRVOOC charger from the brand.
Verdict
While there’s nothing new and groundbreaking about the features of OnePlus 13, it does what many smartphones cannot. It takes all it has to offer and finetunes it a couple of notches, making it a super smooth experience overall. Be it the design, sturdiness (yes, there have been a couple of drops!), camera, software, battery life or the seamlessness of multitasking — all of this went off without a hitch throughout my usage. Priced fairly reasonably for a flagship product, the OnePlus 13 becomes easy to recommend.
Snapshot
₹69,999 (12 GB + 256 GB)
₹76,999 (16 GB + 512 GB)
Pros: Excellent build and display, superior battery life, smooth multitasking, excellent camera setup
Cons: Not many UI upgrades, mixed results in night photography
